TinariwenELWAN
Wedge / [PIAS] / Mushroom

- Tenere Taqqal (what has become of the Tenere, a Tamashek word meaning empty land or desert) is the Touareg desert-rockers first single from their latest album ELWAN (Elephants).

The Tenere has become upland of thorns, where elephants fight each other crushing tender grass under foot. The birds no longer return to their nests at night...read the bitterness on the faces of the innocents…

The strongest impose their will and leave the weakest behind…solidarity is gone.. And joy has abandoned us.”

Exiled from their homeland, a Saharan mountain range, straddling the border between north- eastern Mali & southern Algeria, Tinariwen with this and the twelve other songs, vividly evoke a nostalgic longing for a joyful past and the painful loss of a homeland disrupted by the continuing archaic and violent Salafist insurgency confronting Mali & its surrounding neighbours.

After five years of exile from their encircled and hoped for 'Azawad’ (an independent Tamashek state) and at the end of a lengthy US tour in October 2014, preparation for their eighth album began with an initial recording session at Rancho de la Luna studios in the desert climes of California’s Joshua Tree National Park .

Subtle guitar contributions were laid down by Kurt Vile and Matt Sweeney, musical effects from Queen of the Stoneagers’ one-time producer Alan Johannes and vocals from Mark Lanegan all contributing unobtrusive layers to the 'ishumar' – the name given to the musical style that Tinariwen has become so well known for since their first release 2001’s - The Radio Tisdas Sessions.

Absent from the mix is the renowned circular and loping rhythms of the tinde drums and mesmerising hand-clapping. Completion of ELWAN took place in March 2016 in M’Hamid El Ghizlane, an oasis in southern Morocco where a new percussive dimension was added by the young Berber Gnawa percussion outfit, the Gangas de Tagounite.

Tinariwen have long been the hope of the displaced Touareg, important as a tool in political and social activism for the uprising’s original participants and the hope of the younger generation of the current group’s members.

Intense and cruel as their experiences may be, Tinariwen’s capacity to make music is a powerful statement for the continuation of the values essential to life in the desert.

- Rick Heritage.

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